Enlightenment Now: Liberation Is Your True Nature

By Jason Gregory

A guide to uncovering the enlightenment already within us

• Builds on Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist wisdom to express the timeless and ever-present nature of enlightenment

• Reveals the negative impact of social and cultural conditioning on our psyche and how to counteract this through meditation and reframing our understanding of time

• Shows how to uncover the original spontaneous awareness we were born with

In this philosophical, psychological, and spiritual exploration of enlightenment, Jason Gregory addresses how to access the original spontaneous awareness we all came into this world with. He exposes the illusion that we must strive to reach enlightenment, uncovering how our yearning for future accomplishments, attachment to the past, and reliance on authority outside the self are social constructs that distract us from the reality of the now. The author explains how our original enlightened nature has been obscured by social, cultural, religious, and egotistical conditioning of the mind caught in time.

Building on knowledge from spiritual traditions including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, Gregory expresses the timeless and ever-present nature of enlightenment. He illustrates how rigid practices and initiations can become a form of spiritual postponement, continually putting off our enlightenment because we feel we are doing something good and noble. To chase enlightenment through spiritual practice is to assume it is a quality bound to time. The author helps us see that we are already what we are seeking--once we understand that existing in this world is itself a miracle beyond words, then the magic and beauty of our world will unfold. In the same way we remember someone’s name without thinking about it, we also remember that we are enlightened when we stop searching for the experience.

Emerging from the Middle Way of the Buddha, Lao-tzu’s Way of the Tao, Yoga, the Great Work of Gnosticism, the Hermetic Art of Alchemy, and quantum physics, Gregory presents a way to the state of consciousness--enlightenment, nirvana, or samadhi--in which eternity and time are one. He shows us how to counteract the negative impact of social and cultural conditioning on our psyche through meditation and reframing our understanding of time. The author explains how meditation in its truest form takes our awareness of nowness from theory to practice. Guiding us away from a time-bound understanding of enlightenment, Gregory shows us how to find ourselves in the stillness of now where the peace you are is the peace you give to the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inner Traditions
• Release date: Oct 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781620555927

Jason Gregory

Jason Gregory is a teacher and international speaker specializing in the fields of Eastern and Western philosophy, comparative religion, metaphysics, and ancient cultures. For several years he studied with masters in Buddhism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Hinduism, and Taoism, traveling to some of the most remote places in the world. The filmmaker of the documentary The Sacred Sound of Creation, he divides his time between Asia and Australia.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Out of Time and Into Enlightenment

THE MOST IMPORTANT MYSTERY that we encounter on our endeavor to be free in this life is that what we seek we already possess. This statement not only goes beyond the psychological parameters of what we believe freedom to be in this life, but it also destroys the concept of how we commonly associate freedom with social success and financial security. Yet it is a statement that cannot be uprooted, because success and security, in the socially accepted sense, are arbitrary terms, implying that you do not belong in this world and that somehow to belong you need to be accepted by standing on the shoulders of others who you falsely believe threaten your security.

The accepted notion of success is to assume that our very existence is wrong and that somehow we need to make it right. If your psychological center of gravity were corrected so you understood that you existing in this world is itself a miracle, and thus already successful beyond words, then the magic and beauty of our world would unfold purely because the success we were seeking we already intrinsically owned. This clarified reality of success comes only to those who are already completely free in this life. But this raises the question, what does it mean to be completely free in this life?

The mystery that we encounter in our endeavor toward freedom in this life has nothing fundamentally to do with success and security, as these are intrinsic attributes arising out of the knowledge that one already possesses what one once searched for. But instead, that which is within our original nature is enlightenment, the completely free state, to which this book is dedicated. The idea that we already possess enlightenment is still not generally accepted among those who strive to achieve this state of consciousness. In the same fashion that an athlete sets out goals and trains hard to achieve them, so too do many who are spiritually charged toward liberation in this life. Paradoxically, though, we cannot be enlightened without the undying thirst and hunger for enlightenment. This is called the highest desire within our wisdom traditions.

If one understands this state of enlightenment and what is being said here in a lazy sense, then it will be like waiting in Sydney for a train from New York to Los Angeles: it will simply not arrive, and one will be lost in time, rather than enlightenment striking like lightning. This common understanding of enlightenment becomes time-bound in a linear thought structure in exactly the same way that success and security are thought to be acquired in the future.

This perception of enlightenment within the field of time poses many difficult ideas of what it means to be liberated, and these ideas themselves are obstacles to true liberation. The main difficulty to overcome is that those who strive for enlightenment unknowingly assign it the quality of a temporary state rather than everlasting. Striving for enlightenment does ascribe to it the temporal order of the universe, because anything in the field of time is an illusionary concept of past or future, which ultimately distracts our attention from the reality of the present moment. This is known as samsara ( ) in Sanskrit, referring to the wheel of time, which is thought to be an illusion. In revealing our time-bound concept of enlightenment, it is extremely hard for most of us to swallow, for the sheer fact that enlightenment is the eternal aspect deep within our consciousness that is a reflection of the eternal universe. We tend to try and grasp such axiomatic truths with our intellect, which is itself a time-bound instrument of discernment, and in most cases the result of time. This is not to insult the intellect, but rather it is the recognition that if our intuitive faculties have not opened up, then the intellect has little to no chance of peering into the esoteric heart of the universe that lies beyond the temporal scope. American occultist William Walker Atkinson, writing under the pseudonym Yogi Ramacharaka in the classic Lessons in Gnani Yoga states:

And, the Intellect experiences a similar difficulty when it tries to think of an Eternal—a That which is above and outside of Time. We see Time in operation everywhere, and take it for granted that Time is a reality—an actual thing. But this is a mistake of the senses. There is no such thing as Time, in reality. Time exists solely in our minds. It is merely a form of perception by which we express our consciousness of the Change of Things.

We cannot think of Time except in connection with a succession of changes of things in our consciousness—either things of the outer world, or the passing of thought-things through our mind. A day is merely the consciousness of the passing of the sun—an hour or minute merely the subdivision of the day, or else the consciousness of the movement of the hands of the clock—merely the consciousness of the movement of Things—the symbols of changes in Things. In a world without changes in Things, there would be no such things as Time. Time is but a mental invention. Such is the report of the Intellect.¹

In Sanskrit the essence of eternity within the individual’s consciousness is known as Atman ( ) and the universal essence of eternity underlying and within the nature of things is known as Brahman ( ), the Ultimate Reality. Yoga is the union of both Atman and Brahman, as yoga originates from the Sanskrit root yuj, which means to yoke, unite, or join with the absolute Ultimate Reality/irreducible essence of the universe, similar to the concepts of God in the West, the irreducible essence of the Tao in China, Allah in the Muslim world, and so on. Patañjali, the great sage of Indian antiquity, articulates this more simply in his epic Yoga-Sūtra. The first sutra (1.1) states:

Now, the teachings of yoga. ²

The point Patañjali is attempting to express in this sutra is that right now, completely in this present moment, is where our consciousness is enlightened in union with the irreducible essence of the universe. Not five minutes from now, tomorrow, or at a future date, but instead, right here and now. This should be fundamental, common sense in our world, yet all systems of knowledge are put into a framework of time. But if enlightenment is the eternal essence of our consciousness, how could eternity be anywhere else but now? Enlightenment could not be associated with any framework of time, as we will continue to discover throughout this book. How then could we strive for something that is right here in our possession? There is no way that we could. But the world we are all brought into overemphasizes its focus upon social success and material wealth, which keeps our attention fixed on the future. This perspective limits our mind because we are molded to believe we are each separate, a view that increases our anxious belief of not belonging to life. Anything associated with time only perpetuates this belief and is a key contributor to the underlying anxiety of our civilization. Any framework of time, then, must be limited as it is in correspondence with the temporal aspect of the universe, samsara. On the other hand, enlightenment is limitless and corresponds to the eternal aspect of the universe that is eclipsed by samsara. This eternal resonance in our consciousness is known in Sanskrit as nirvana ( ), the enlightened mind. Yet, even the Sanskrit nirvana is thought of in terms of time and a striving for enlightenment.

Nirvana is a word used extensively in Buddhism with the upmost of reverence. But even in Buddhism, nirvana is thought of in the framework of time. Especially in Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, one is taught to chase after enlightenment as if it is some future event. In following this method, a monk replicates a dog chasing its own tail, and in doing so, never actually arrives because the point of arrival is here and now.

Zen, the most recognized Buddhism in Japan, also treats enlightenment in the sense of time through the practice of zazen. Zazen is a way of trying to induce a permanent state of enlightenment upon the mind of the monk, which again implies that we do not already possess enlightenment. Though this is the modern perspective of Zen in Japan, it was not the original Zen that washed onto their shores from China, Tibet, and Nepal, and before that, from India originally. The original Zen was wholly concerned with the realization that enlightenment is an innate aspect of our consciousness, which is why many of the original masters of Zen, such as Bodhidharma, always emphasized the importance to their students of giving up the search for enlightenment because it cannot be acquired in the same way we acquire beliefs or purchase a new garment. Not only the masters of Zen, but almost all masters of Eastern and Western contemplative spiritual traditions as well, believe that enlightenment exists outside of time and in eternity, which exists in the ever-present now.

The original practice of Zen means to be completely absorbed in the eternal now, which brings the contemplative wisdom of enlightenment to the forefront of one’s pure mind. The word Zen in Japanese actually refers to that contemplative enlightened state, which derives from the Japanese pronunciation of the Middle Chinese word chan ( ) and in turn is derived from dhyana ( ) in Sanskrit which can be translated as absorption, concentration, or meditative state. Zen, then, means to be completely absorbed in the present moment in everything we experience in life. Zen in conversation, Zen in art, Zen in eating, Zen in making love, Zen in meditation, and Zen in going to the toilet. No matter what our experience is, it is Zen if there really is only the eternal now.

The biggest problem that exists not only in Buddhism, but also in life in general, is that we seek to induce a state of consciousness that already is our original nature. Our mind, caught in the details of time, cannot perceive this original nature because it is obscured by social, cultural, religious, and egotistical conditioning. When we seek what we already have, we prevent ourselves from perceiving the eternal in all things through the original state of enlightenment. We feel distant and cut off from eternity, so we seek any method to induce enlightenment. We practice meditation, yoga, t’ai chi, qigong, lucid dreaming, mindfulness; we take psychedelics; or we sit at the feet of a guru. All of this is a form of spiritual postponement, meaning that we are continually putting off our enlightenment to feel as though we are doing something good and noble from striving.

Tantric Buddhism shares some of the same basic philosophical underpinnings of Zen. The tenth-century tantric work of Saraha expresses this point:

If it [the Truth] is already manifest, what’s the use of meditation?

And if it is hidden, one is just measuring darkness.

Mantras and tantras, meditation and concentration,

They are all a cause of self-deception.

Do not defile in contemplation thought that is pure in its own nature,

But abide in the bliss of yourself and cease those torments.

Whatever you see, that is it,

In front, behind, in all the ten directions.

Even today let your master make an end of delusion!

The nature of the sky is originally clear,

But by gazing and gazing the sight becomes obscured. ³

Zen, like Taoism, explains that there is a unique naturalness to enlightenment because the individual has stepped out of the illusion of a past and future, and instead fallen into the eternal way of the now—or to use Taoist terminology, way of the Tao. When we do not try to induce enlightenment, we fall into accord with nature. The reason for this is because nature’s patterns, principles, and essential reality are in the pure stillness of the eternal now. Nature cannot be yesterday or tomorrow; it can only be now. Humanity must realize that we are also nature, and what constitutes nature’s reality constitutes ours. There is not nature on the one hand and humanity on the other. We are nature, and because we have the assumption that we are not, we destroy nature as if we were its lords. Isolating ourselves from nature breeds unnecessary anxiety, because we are perpetually obsessed with survival rather than the reality of belonging to nature and thriving as a result. Our impetus toward survival is rooted in our expectations of the future based on our experiences of the past. The stress of survival has nothing to do with the Zen mind absorbed in the present moment.

The understanding that we belong to nature and that we can trust the universe arises in the consciousness of one who is absorbed in the eternal now of enlightenment. This absorption is a complete and thorough comprehension that enlightenment is innately ours right now and nowhere else. Despite saying all this, the vast majority of us, in fact, do not truly feel it. Others may feel it, but it is a temporary state that comes and goes according to our experiences. Nevertheless, we do slip in and out of being completely conscious in the reality of the present moment, which is explored within this book.

I am mindful, though, that something as deep and profound as the enlightenment that is experienced in the present moment can be superficially understood by the discursive intellect. In all sincere self-work practiced by those interested in the great work of eternity, a subtle state of consciousness and perception known as the intellectual intuition develops within the sincere seeker of truth. This allows one to delve into the esoteric heart of the mystery veiled in temporal form. Enlightenment Now is not like any of the multitude of New Age materials that pacify the individual with a superficial understanding of enlightenment and the eternal now, one that the wine connoisseur would say lacks body. On the contrary, this book will give an extensive study of the philosophical, psychological, metaphysical, and spiritual implications of what remaining completely present in the state of enlightenment actually means and how it is really the only state of being. This will also reveal how it is a social and cultural imperative to live in the now.

My wish in this book is to reveal the esoteric heart of enlightenment so we can all bask in the eternal sunshine from within. This book itself exists within time, yet the inspiration and artistry of this book is of an order beyond the realm of time. I am not saying here that I myself dwell in eternity and so therefore I could write this book. Rather, I mean that any form of art is inspired and comes from that eternal spontaneity beyond time and space, which is an intelligence that you and I are an aspect of. Yet, the irony is that any piece of art—no matter whether it is writing, music, painting, gardening, or any other art—can only be experienced, felt, and understood within the field of time. Art is the result of time and eternity fusing together. It is as if an artist has found a way to bring postcards back from eternity and present them using our limited instruments of time, no matter whether that is a pen or paintbrush. As an artist brings the eternal into temporal reality, a sage in the same resonant quality of an artist can perceive the eternal in the realm of time. The prolific writer and mystical philosopher Aldous Huxley gives credence to this enlightened state within The Perennial Philosophy:

For the fully enlightened, totally liberated person, samsara and nirvana, time and eternity, the phenomenal and the Real, are essentially one. His whole life is an unsleeping and one-pointed contemplation of the Godhead in and through the things, lives, minds and events of the world becoming. There is here no mutation of the soul, no atrophy of any of its powers and capacities. Rather, there is a general enhancement and intensification of consciousness,